UC Irvine's Business Portal:
Simple Navigational Administrative Portal SNAP
   
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Updated: June 3, 2006
The report UC 2010: A New Business Architecture for the University of California Business Portal (NBA) calls for the development of a Business Portal.

The Business Portal is central to the University's New Business Architecture. The portal's Web browser interface serves as the entry point for UC staff to access information, tools and training necessary to perform their job duties. The portal serves as the gateway to the University's resources and provides intuitive, personalized access to information and technology resources in a secure, consistent and customizable manner. It integrates and aggregates tools and software applications with internal and external information sources and databases. Business Portal users will experience a number of key benefits:

  • A flexible method of finding useful information, allowing for greater productivity and fewer transaction errors.
  • More accurate data will be available for management reporting along with better standardized reporting templates.
  • Online tutorials and navigation will reduce the need for conventional training courses.
  • Workload will be reduced as more transactions are automated using workflow tools.
  • And over time the system will become more user friendly and personalized as feedback is collected from the user.
In the Fall of 2001, UC Irvine responded to the New Business Architecture initiative with SNAP - the Simple Navigational Administrative Portal. After evaluating various technologies and components, a J2EE technical architecture for portal development was selected. In the component selection, due to the volatility and immaturity of the relatively new portal market niche, preference was given to tools that met the minimal requirements and came with end-user source code. Since then, various teams have been assembled across UC Irvine, to partner in the vision.

Technology Selected
Functional Component Feature Product Name
Portal Personalization, Customization, Integration JA-SIGS uPortal (Open source)
Authentication Single sign-on (using Kerberos) UC Irvine's WEBAuth.
Directory and Security Services User/Profile/Group/Role Management, Authorization OpenLDAP (Open source)
On-line Training Multi-media, quizzes, learning assessment, class self-registration and cancellation software Macromedia's Flash
Content Management Versioning, Concurrency Control, Workflow jCorporate eContent (End user Source)
Content Authoring HTML, XML Templates Dreamweaver, Mozilla Composer, Authentic (XMLSpy)
Document Management Imaging, OCR'ing.... Mobius - already bought
Business Intelligence, Reporting EIS, Query and Reporting, OLAP, Charting MS Excel, BLISS (Homegrown), Mobius, dataBeacon OLAP - already bought
Workflow and Routing Java-embeddable engine, basic routing of forms, email notification DralaSoftware (purchased May, 2002)
Collaboration Threaded discussion, messaging, chat, survey, FAQ Management, Help Desk eForum (jCorporate)
Knowledge Management FAQ Management, Taxonomy and Categorization Creation eFAQ (jCorporate)
Search engine Structured and unstructured material Inktomi/Verity.
Link checker Search and report broken web links LinkScan
PKI Java API Interface Verisign
Web Server HTTP server, servlets & JSP container Apache Webserver and Tomcat
Application Server Legacy and transaction integration None yet
Hardware Must support up to 1000 concurrent Web users SunFire 4800 Solaris box.